Welcome to Room 302
You play as Henry Townshend, a calm and collected man who unfortunately lives in room 302. You'll immediately notice a change from previous Silent Hill titles as you make your way through your apartment. The rooms are well-lit, the windows reviews a clear environment, and your character is in first-person perspective. Don't fright, this will actually change once Henry discovers a portal that leads outside where you'll explore a haunted subway, a dark forest, a water prison, a haunted apartment, and a hospital filled with burping nurses. You'll explore and solve various puzzles that requires collecting red notes and key items. There are an abundance of melee weapons and a pistol at your disposal. Plenty of nutrition drinks and med kits at scattered throughout the map, and you'll also find Holy candles which I'll get into later.
Unlike previous Silent Hill games, Silent Hill: The Room takes place almost entirely indoors (hence rendering the fog unnecessary). Save points are placed inside your apartment and you'll need to find a large hole to proceed back to save. You can also explore your apartment but there not a whole lot to do. Oddly, you'll find a storage box (reminiscence of the older Resident Evil titles) used for inventory management which you will do a lot. Unlike Jill Valentine, Henry relies more on his lead pipe than his firearms. There's nothing with the melee as its actually very useful. You can charge your attack and pull off a powerful swing to drop your enemies. After stunning them, you must stomp on them to kill (or smack them some more, but stepping is much more convenient). Henry's attack animations are somewhat clumsy and slow. However, when he performs an attack, he has a brief moment of invincibility that compliments his slow reaction (and that definitely helps since The Room will throw hordes of enemies at you).
The pistol is almost pointless as Henry will face far more enemies than the amount of ammo you'll find. Because of your limited storage capacity, it doesn't help that every 10 rounds consumes one inventory slot. With all the keys, health kits, and puzzles you'll be solving, you'll definitely need a clean inventory to explore smoothly (If only Henry could drop items from his inventory…)
Away from combat, the environments are richly detailed, soaking in every little detail that's begging to stand out. In some places (like the bloody insides of an apartment) I found myself too intrigued by the environments to move on. There's a strange vibe that feels heavy hostility, and I'm loving it. The music is subtle for the most part, and there are some questionable romance themes that often bog downs the mood. The amount of creatures your facing are limited to slimes, jointed twins walking on two large arms, furry bats, and the obnoxiously annoying ghost. Aside from the story-plotted ghost that chases you around, there are ghost who will see you and pick at your chest, and there are ghost who sticks half their torso through a wall and starts clawing at you. These ghost are not scary as the developers made them to be; they make exploration a hassle, they can't be killed, and they have these cheap long range attacks that chips away your health.
Half-way through the game, you'll meet a girl name Eileen. Unlike Ashley from Resident Evil 4, Eileen will put up a fight, and often too much. You'll need to venture through doors and areas with her to advance to game. Sometimes she'll get lost in the frantic of battle, but she never seems to be the main target of enemies. She's not very talkative either, but considering her condition , you'll feel sympathy for both these characters and want to see them escape alive.
One of the coolest things in the game is actually inside Henry's very own apartment. As you progress the game, the apartment will start to degrade. It'll get darker and there will be spirits moaning inside your bedroom. The windows will open and shut itself, the clock will spin out of control, the kitchen sink will be drenched with blood, and large holes sprouts a ghostly image through the wall. It all looks too surreal and disturbing, horror fans will definitely savor the experience. One thing to note though, is that if you let your apartment get haunted, it will no longer replenish your health (which it does automatically if you wipe out the spirits) and you'll experience a red grainy static that will take off a chunk of your health. To save Henry's apartment from spirits, you'll need holy candles to scare them away. Also to note, there is not static radio to speak of, the enemies you'll encounter will make their own noise patterns (slimes making squishy noises, Cerberus "tick tick" their paws, and twins making thump noises). What's odd are the actual noises they make when you slaughter them, it sounds like a zoo (wait till you hear the monkeys..)
Survival-horror feeds off of great atmosphere and sounds, and The Room is no exception. The environments look bloody, dark, and disturbing. The atmosphere permeates a dark hostile mood. The sounds of the static in company of Akira Yamaoka's haunting soundtracks makes for an unforgettable experience.
Silent Hill 4: The Room is a great horror title that will please most survival-horror fans. A game that delivers the most of what it does, Silent Hill IV is a sweet nightmarish treat that doesn't come without flaws, but the feeling of hostility never gets old. Grab a ticket to room 302, there's nightmares waiting for you.